I love to cook, experiment, try new foods and restaurants. As a coeliac this is often a little difficult. There is the converting recipes that you have used for years, to be GF friendly. Eating out somewhere new, or even with a new chef, it's either a great night or a huge pain in the belly! I hope you enjoy my recipes, stories and adventures of my life as a coeliac.

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Monday, 14 May 2012

Our Food Allergies Food Allergies Blog Hop!

Welcome to our very first Our Food Challenges Blog Hop. (This page won't officially open until 9am, so please don't try and post anything until then).With this month's focus being Food Allergies. Please follow the list of instructions to enter in our Blog Hop. This month's Blog Hop coincides with Australia's Allergies Awareness Week, so spread the word, share your allergy stories, pass on the link to this Blog Hop, create more awareness to allergies in Australia, this is also our mission. The Blog Hop will be happening monthly with a different focus each month, to cover all our various food challenges. Although this is not the first Blog Hop I'm participating in, it's the first that I'm running so please be patient with me, if I miss an instruction or a point here or there, just send me an email mmoagflife@gmail.com and I will endeavour to amend it asap. I cannot credit this Blog Hop without the wonderful support from Suzie from AusAllergy, who will be one of your host's in the upcoming months', the list of future host will be updated on Wednesday AEST. Please feel free to join us on AEST 8.30pm Tuesday nights to chat on Twitter, simply use the #ausallergy tag to join, we love new people and everyone is very friendly and caring.

Without further ado here is my story, dedicated to my oldest and dear friend;

I met my friend when we were just 8 years old, young children in primary school. I was drawn to her, her slight English accent and we just bonded as children do. It wasn't long into our friendship that I discovered that my friend had a severe anphylaxis reaction to peanuts.
So I was only young when I learnt just how dangerous food allergies could be, in the late 1980s, this was something that wasn't as common knowledge as it is today's society. I still recall going out to dinner and my friend eating a lolly (candy) which obviously contained some degree of peanuts or peanut oil in it. I sat there watching, as her face began to become blotchy and puffy, her lips swelled as did her eyes, and it was all from just one lolly.

Throughout primary and high school my friend was very cautious of what those around her ate and had to ensure to stay well away from anyone consuming peanut butter, at risk of cross contamination.

Thankfully in 2012, peanut allergies are taken very seriously and the organisation that my friend works for has taken on board a no peanut policy in the office, there is a no tolerance policy of staff bringing in peanuts, the government work place has taken this stance because if she digests peanuts it could be life threatening! There is an epi- pen not only in my friend's bag but at the office, this is so important because any accidental digestion of nuts could lead to a life threatening situation, and the epi- pen may very well save her life. She has pictures around her office stating that she cannot have peanuts. This visual approach has been supported by group memos that have been sent around to all staff informing them of my friends condition.

Please take all allergies seriously, particularly if you are a chef or in the industry. A slight cross contamination even on the smallest level can be result in death to a person and recent cases overseas at schools and in the public have. People death in anaphylaxis can literally occur in minutes!
For all those people who have anaphylaxis reactions please make sure you carry your epi-pen, and that it is in date, this could one day save your life. Also please contemplate wearing a medi- bracelet that informs people of your condition, in case of an extreme reaction; you may not have the opportunity to tell people what you are allergic too, this could again save your life.
I hope that you enjoy our first blog hop for Our Food Challenges; remember to participate all you need is a blog and a food allergy story to share.

Steps to participate (please be kind if I miss some I will fix them straight away!)

1. Copy and paste OFC logo that appears before my story, our a link to my page, and paste it on your post so that your post will be able to link back to mine.
2. Grab the linky code,(in red at the bottom of the screen it will say get code here) and put your blog into edit HTML mode and put the code at the bottom of your post, once your click off HTML, you won't be able to see the code but it will allow all the other post from the Blog Hop to appear on your screen.
3. Enter your details into the Linky Tools Screen, your name is the name of your Blog, and your link is to copy and paste your blog.
4. The message will come to me for approval and I as soon as I click ok, you will be able to see your post come up with the other stories (I will endeavour to get to the computer as often as possible but please don't fret, your story will be published or if there is a problem I will be in contact with you).
5. The steps in Linky Tools are pretty much self explanatory, even for a beginner, when I did my first Blog Hop I managed to fill everything out without too much problem. But please remember I am an email away.

6 comments:

The lady behind Allergies R Us would like to share here link and here allergy story. She is an advocate of allergies and has started the #ausallergy chat on Twitter on Tuesday nights which I mentioned in my post. See the link here for here story. For anyone else wishing to join the blog hop don't forget to follow the list of instructions I have written. http://www.allergiesrus.com.au/2012/05/our-food-challenges-allergies/

Food allergy is an allergic answer to certain kinds of food. apart for the likenesses in symptoms, a food allergy is more critical than food intolerance.Someone with food intolerance can consume little portions of the food he is allergic to.